pandemic preparedness

Turkey is a transcontinental country, with territory contiguously spanning two continents. It is bordered by eight countries and is circled by sea on three sides. The international airport in Istanbul is the 10th busiest airport in the world, and last year, in 2016, more than 60 million passengers went through it. Of these, two-thirds were international passengers. Yes, Turkey is very vulnerable to disease outbreaks. Indeed, all countries are.

In my blog in February I described the rationale behind the creation of the International Working Group on Financing Preparedness (“IWG”), which is focused on how to ensure sustainable funding for the first line of defence against pandemics – prevention, identification and containment of infectious disease outbreaks at a national level. The IWG had its second face-to –face meeting earlier this month in London at Wellcome Trust. The goal of this meeting was to review the analytical work that had taken place over the last couple of months and debate a draft set of recommendations. Since that meeting we have been refining these recommendations with a view to presenting them in draft form to the UN Secretary General’s Global Health Crisis taskforce on May 1 and launching the full report at the World Health Assembly on May 25.